Kul Elna: 99 Day Challenge
by Donteatacowman
Summary: Written by the King of Thieves; reminiscing about the various people who died in the slaughter of his village. Not out of nostalgia, but because their ghosts cry out for their stories to be told...
1. Benerib

_Author's Note: These are accounts written by CagedInGold on Tumblr. He is an alternate timeline version of the YGO Bakura you all know and love. He has the same past up to mid-Season 0. The Thief has been locked inside the Ring without controlling anyone's body until he takes over Ryoh Bakura and becomes what we know as Yami Bakura. _

* * *

At the behest of their spirits.

_Benerib._

She died at the age of sixty-seven, a ripe old age for anyone, but especially for a Thief. She didn't get it by laziness. She was quick and clever, and her body didn't succumb to frailty or age until it was melted into the gold.

She could be cruel, yes. As young children, My playmates and I would clamor into the bushes growing around her small house, sneaking fruits and sometimes blossoms out, thinking ourselves so quiet and clever. H-heh. Old Benerib was never afraid to strip down some tree bark with her bare hands and lash us with it when she caught us. We children thought she was a demon and hated her for the red marks left on our hands and backs, but the adults told us to thank her for training us to not get caught.

We thought that was bullshit, but I admit, it worked to a degree.

And the twinkle in her eyes when she spied us, the way she would make us think we were in the clear until suddenly the old hag spun around and cornered us—thinking back on it, she must have enjoyed the "raids" as much as we did when we managed to get something out of them.

Mm. Still, she had begun to stoop a bit, and her dark skin—darker than most of ours; she said it was because she had Nubian blood—had gotten wrinkled enough for us to jeer at her and call her "spider" and "Neith." In Kul Elna, you see, the gods were for the most part reviled as tools of the pharaoh, so to call her by the name of the spider goddess was an insult.

When I was around five years of age, I was left with Benerib when the rest of My family was out. I don't recall what exactly I did in her home, but I know both she and My parents punished Me for it quite severely. I might still have a mark from that on My body somewhere.

H-heh. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was worth it.

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	2. Henti Heti

_Henti-Heti._

His ghost is somewhat more… insistent than the others. I may not have the leisure to only do one of these a day.

Het-het—

Henti-Heti was My older brother by a few years. Loud and pushy even though his body was thin and wiry, and his health wasn't the best. He got sick often; despite our age difference we were a fair match when we fought. We annoyed the hell out of each other, of course, as siblings do, but he also taught Me some of the important basics to Thieving, the things the adults didn't think to mention. He put the two of us in danger more than once, and he would have been punished for both our sakes if My father wasn't afraid of accidentally just snapping the child in two.

Come to think of it, he showed Me the right place to hide when the soldiers came… though he was too tall to fit there…

Ahem.

We weren't too close to the river in Kul Elna, being on the outskirts of Kemet, so we didn't get to play in the reeds or throw stones at fish like most boys our age. Instead we satisfied ourselves with exploring our village stone by stone, wandering off into the desert—once we were lost there for several days and assumed dead, actually—and, of course, fighting each other.

Unlike modern day families, ours approved of our fighting to a degree. Just like cubs and kits tear at each other's throats in their play to prepare them for real fights, Het-het and I played rougher with each other than with any other Thieves. We learned the dirty tricks by figuring them out ourselves, just as we learned to deal with pain without letting it cripple us. It was rare that we were truly being mean-spirited, so most arguments ended before the day's end according to who was left standing.

The last year of his life, though, I was forbidden from playing with Het-het at all, besides simple board games and pretending. He stayed inside most of the time from that point on. I admit, I thought it was My fault since it was a particularly harsh fight of ours that first made him bedridden. Looking back, I realize it was some sort of malady… I wonder if he'd have even survived long if the Items had never been made.

I miss the days when he wasn't always angry and fierce. Though he nagged and ordered at me incessantly even when he was living.


	3. Hapimen

_Hapimen_.

The old man—well, not so old now that I look back on it; he was in his mid-thirties or so, I believe, but that was old enough to us children—he had once been a fisherman by the Nile and oh, how he liked to brag on it. He'd regale us with stories that we believed wholeheartedly at the time, even though we were raised to keep a healthy level of skepticism about tales and myths. He once narrowly escaped being crushed to death by a hippopotamus. He took to the high seas for a few years as a trader, but was forced to find his way back home on his own when his crewmates were all washed overboard in a fierce storm. As a teenager, he courted a princess and even went to bed with her, only to make off with her valuables and be gone by morning! H-heh heh.

Unlike many of the adults of the village, Hapimen didn't grow up in the area, and that I know for a fact. According to My mother, he had only been a petty Thief in order to supplement his income as a professional fisherman, but was eventually caught and run off by some guards. He was, indeed, lucky in that he escaped with his life. Since he no longer could live by the River, he had to perfect his only other skill, Thievery. Eventually he settled down here—ah, _there_, in Kul Elna—with a woman and started raising a family.

Even though he was a good deal richer than the rest of us when he first arrived, we soon fixed that! And not even through pick-pocketing—for the most part, Kul Elna left its own alone, because what was there that we had worth stealing? No, the adults soon found out that Hapimen was a gambler at heart, so he soon lost his fortune fair and square. Much to the dismay of his wife! Sometimes we'd be able to hear her scold him for hours on end! Poor man!

His skin was tanned and lined from his many hours in the sun and he was missing a tooth or two from rot—ah well. No matter his other faults, he was an engaging and lively speaker and very personable. Because of this, he was fairly well liked.


	4. Khuit

_Khuit_.

Khuit was a cousin of mine—the daughter of My mother's brother Kawab, whom I'll speak about later—and she was the darling of the village. Her hair by some odd mix of genetics was a golden blonde, and no one met her that didn't remark on its beauty. I imagine that had she lived longer she'd have learned to take vanity from that, but by her death she was still a child, one who resented her parents' insistence on cleanliness and primping. The other children of the village, including Myself, were in the habit of running around and playing with dirt and sticks. She was never allowed to join in, so we did not know her well.

I imagine her parents intended to sell her as a slave at some point, so she had to be kept in good shape.

And believe Me, that is not nearly as callous as it sounds.

The life of a Thief was in the eyes of some even worse than slavery—our freedom was restricted by having to evade the law; it was not odd for us to starve to death or get killed during a raid; the women in particular were vulnerable to soldiers' and guards' lust if they ever came across one from the palace; there was always the danger of slavery itself at best if caught by one of the pharaoh's men; having a permanent home like Kul Elna was nearly unheard of, and as the slaughter proved, for good reason. And a beautiful, blonde slave like Khuit would be worth enough to feed her family for a year, and honestly gotten, too.

Her life would have much improved in a few years, once she got to marriageable age, I think. Most likely she'd have been bought by a plump rich man as a concubine, and be well-fed and pampered for the remainder of her days. Though she resented it as a child, she would have thanked the gods' for her parents' wisdom in future days.

Poor girl. Her golden hair was oddly prophetic of her fate, and even now she's an object of greedy pursuit amongst any who lay eyes on her.


End file.
